by Stephanie Manning

Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory

“If it’s meant to happen, the music will find you.” That’s how Martha Redbone sees it. And it wasn’t until she was in college studying illustration in the late ’80s, that the music found her for good.

Back then, the advent of the first Mac was rapidly changing the art world. “As an illustrator who loved painting and drawing people, that digital world was not for me,” she said. Feeling torn, she turned to music as a creative outlet, starting as a background vocalist before progressing into a career as a lead singer. Together with her songwriting partner (and later life partner) the pianist Aaron Whitby, she began to write music that had stories to tell.

“ There was a connection and a resonance that I got from singing, and it gave me a sense of peace,” she says. “I’ll always be an artist, I’ll always be an illustrator. But the music is what ended up calling me, and I just listened to that call.”

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